MubbCap: Howard & Anim Deliver as Marquette Holds On

Do you have a bar where a team of yours is undefeated when you go there? For me, it’s Dukes on Water and Marquette. By my estimations, they’re 3-0 awhen I go to Dukes for a game. I was there on Saturday for Marquette-Villanova. Part of me felt like my heart was ready to sink when Villanova battled back and had some chances to take the lead. Thankfully, Marquette did enough in the latter stages of the game to hang on for an impressive 66-65 victory over Villanova. Golden Eagles hand the Wildcats their first loss of Big East play, and it gives MU a real shot at potentially winning another Big East title.

Player of the Game: Markus Howard – How many more signature games can this guy add to his resume? Honestly, Howard is a beast. He went off for 38 points with six rebounds. He made five three-pointers and made seven free throws. Howard played a great game against Nova. It wasn’t like they were defending him poorly either. Howard found a way to get his shots up and boy did he ever. The first half almost featured a better version of Howard with some of the plays he made to help Marquette establish a lead.

Silver Star: Sacar Anim – What makes Marquette so dangerous in March is the fact that when Sam Hauser, the second banana of this team, is off, there are other players that can fill in for this role. Case in point, Sacar Anim who had an unbelievable game for Marquette. He finished with 18 points making eight-of-his-10 shots being extremely efficient inside the arc. When Howard wasn’t cooking, Anim made up for it.

Thing I liked: The confidence of Marquette keeps growing – Marquette has a very solid resume that got even stronger with the win over Villanova. The team probably doesn’t give a shit about their resume, but they do care about their confidence. Marquette might be overflowing in that category. This team believes they can beat anyone on a given night. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they’ve done. For the Golden Eagles, I don’t think that was always the case this season but it keeps growing with big wins.

Thing I didn’t like: Near all-time collapse – If Marquette loses this game, it’s one of the more memorable defeats in the Steve Wojciechowski era. It’s National Marquette Day, sellout crowd, bars packed and for them to blow a 15 point lead would have been crushing. Thankfully, it didn’t happen for Marquette. But, they need to do better job of stepping on the throat. This team could have easily ran away with this game yet Marquette went cold at the wrong time.

Next up: Marquette will try to avoid a letdown at DePaul and their new stadium. Marquette is done playing at the dump where they did not perform very well. Marquette has to shake off any good feelings about Nova and focus on DePaul come Tuesday night. Blue Demons are trying to get out of the first round Big East Tournament and make a move towards the top. Golden Eagles won the first matchup by 10.